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Jul 13, 2017

Just A Note To Social Security: We Haven't Forgotten

     Here's something I posted on October 26, 2015:
The National Association of Disability Examiners (NADE), an organization of personnel involved in making disability determinations for Social Security, has released its most recent newsletter, focusing on NADE's recent conference in Portland.
NADE members attending the conference heard a presentation on Social Security's effort to create a new occupational information system to replace the outdated Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) used in disability determinations. There are a couple of items of interest from the write-up. The number of occupations listed will go down from the DOT's 12,000 to 1,000, which means that each job title will be even more of a composite. Composite jobs are broader and can only be described in more amorphous ways. Training on the new occupational information system is supposed to begin sometime in 2016.
     Here's a little something from the newsletter of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants Representatives (not available online) concerning the organization's conference in Washington in June 2017 where Bea Disman, Acting Chief of Staff of the Acting Commissioner of Social Security, spoke:
Disman also discussed SSA’s work with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to update the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. She indicated that they have ended the first year of a multi-year effort by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to complete an Occupational Requirements Survey SSA can use in a replacement for the DOT.
     Wait, what? In October 2015, the DOT replacement was so nearly done that it could be described, so nearly done that training was scheduled to begin shortly. However, in June 2017, the DOT replacement project had just begun with completion many years into the future. Anybody at Social Security want to explain that one?
     My assumption is that the data collected earlier didn't show what the agency wanted it to show. The unskilled sedentary jobs have disappeared and the unskilled light jobs are dramatically fewer. That's inconvenient for Social Security since that should result in many more disability claims being approved but Congressional Republicans don't want that. The result is that Social Security sits on the updated data and tries to find some way to twist the results into something that will please Congressional Republicans. I don't think I'm alone in this assumption. In fact, does anyone who understands this issue think otherwise?
     Democrats can do little about this now but if they control the House of Representatives after the 2018 election, the agency should expect pointed questions on this subject. Sitting on this for several years won't look good.

8 comments:

  1. Alternative Theory: The effort required to collect meaningful and reliable data upon which to base the replacement tool is going more slowly than planned due to budgetary constraints. This tool has to have a solid foundation allowing more effective adaptation and amendment to avoid having the Son of DOT in 10 years.

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  2. Come on. The great social security crackdown by right wing during the worst ongoing economic downturn since the Great Depression coupled with technology and out sourcing wiping out American jobs. Demanding all of these displaced people in their fifties and early sixties "get back to work" when the pols and their corporate keepers nearly destroyed the American work base. A real populist fighting to make America Great Again would be doing more about this instead of just hiring Goldman Sachs alums to fill government positions. Pathetic.

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  3. Republicans want to run govt agencies like a vulture capitalist by selling off the assets then filing bankruptcy. This is the type mentality we have now in the EP, Interior, Education, HHS, etc. It is why we should never have a "businessman" running the country. The last one was Hoover. How did that turn out?

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  4. 12:40 Well done, not everything is a conspiracy!

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  5. 12:40 if you are saying that you are obviously one of the conspirators.

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  6. Sometimes the answer is much simpler than a contrived conspiracy. Sometimes it is just inept people, like Sr. Attys. No conspiracy, just bad actors.

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